Not Everything Sucks: Progress In Washington
Things are looking up in the District of Columbia. Continue reading Not Everything Sucks: Progress In Washington
Category: COVID-19
Sit Down And Mask Up
On Thursday, a woman undergoing breast cancer treatment at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, was sprayed with bear mace, physically assaulted, and verbally abused outside a cancer treatment center in West Hollywood, Los Angeles by far-right activists who were angry … Continue reading Sit Down And Mask Up
Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – Hannity Vanity Insanity edition
Poor Freepers – hit from every side by indictments, failure to overturn vote counts, truly shitty attendance for the MGS and Matt Gaetz mobile shitshow, and the Delta variant killing off their base (with their help) like the Orkin man gassing a roach nest.
At least they still have Hannity.
SEAN HANNITY: ” … I believe in science. I believe in the science of vaccination”
twitter ^ | July 19 | Sahil KkapurPosted on 7/19/2021, 9:02:28 PM by RandFan
@sahilkapur
SEAN HANNITY: “Please take Covid seriously. I can’t say it enough. Enough people have died. We don’t need any more death. Research like crazy. Talk to your doctor… I believe in science. I believe in the science of vaccination.”
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Hannity urges viewers to get vaccinated: “Please take COVID seriously”
Axios ^ | July, 20th, 2021 | Rebecca FalconerPosted on 7/20/2021, 8:07:45 AM by David Chase
What he’s saying: Hannity said earlier this year he was “beginning to have doubts” about whether he would take a vaccine.
But on Monday night, he told “Hannity” viewers, “I believe in science, I believe in the science of vaccination.” “I can’t say it enough. Enough people have died. We don’t need any more deaths,” Hannity said. Of note: Fox New hosts Steve Doocy and Bill Hemmer also urged people on Monday to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, the Hill notes.
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Uh oh.
Comments should be interesting.
At least his comments will prompt the Freeperati to make some long-overdue decisions.
To: David ChaseI’m glad he’s saying this. It just reinforces the decision I made years ago to stop watching his show and Fox News.
I was thinking about a different decision, actually.
To: RandFanDoes he ever state that he got the jab?
To: MarkAll Fox hosts including Tucker have been vaccinated.
To: RandFanWell he’s always claimed to be a diehard republican so I guess we now know that it means he’s a RINO. Either that or someone’s got something on him.
One little problem with that :
To: PollardBut(sic) your logic, Trump is a RINO for promoting the vaccine.
To: PollardSo you are saying Trump is a RINO?
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What an excellent comeback!!
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To: RandFanPeople have become so stupid that they don’t know the difference between believing in science and believing in scientists. I believe in my own common sense
When you die, can I have your car?
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To: RandFanHannity always was a cretin.92 posted on 7/19/2021, 10:13:25 PM by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change with out notice.)
Takes one to know one.
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More after the jumperooni…
Today on Tommy T’s Random Ruminations – Leaping Lemmings edition
You know, people – I’m obviously fascinated with the GOP’s destruction of their own voting base – old white people, of course. Do they realize that by spreading the anti-vaxxer tropes, they’re killing their own voters? Is this intentional? Is there someone at the top (no, not The Darnold, someone who actually runs things) who is a Democratic Party plant? A double agent whose mission is to put the Dems back in power permanently? It’s a legitimate question, and I can’t come up with a lot of answers for “why are they so intent in killing their own voters?” Do … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Random Ruminations – Leaping Lemmings edition
Kevin And Karen Can F*%K Themselves
My new favorite TV show is called Kevin Can F*%K Himself. If you don’t know, the premise of the show is that that main character, Allison, lives in two different television realities. In the brightly lit multi-camera sitcom world she is the perpetually put upon wife of the titular man child character. Think Leah Remini in The King Of Queens. In the other darker single camera world she is a woman on the edge of a nervous, potentially homicidal, breakdown ready to do anything to escape the hell that her husband has made of her life. Think Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad. The combination of the two is a phenomenal deconstruction of both styles. I’m particularly drawn to the point it makes about how situations perceived as benign one way are tragic in another.
Which brings me to vaccines. In particular, the COVID 19 vaccine.
Let me just begin by saying that if you are a Kevin or a Karen who still hasn’t gotten the vaccine, you can go f*#k yourself. I don’t want to hear your excuses. I don’t want to hear about how the FDA hasn’t fully approved it (this is an emergency dickwad and it was approved for emergency use so f**k you use it). I don’t want to hear about how you HEARD it might mess with your DNA (no more than that six pack of Coors before dinner every night does and probably a lot less). I don’t want to hear about how you’re just being cautious and once the science comes in you’ll decide from there (like you care about science or could even read a scientific report let alone understand it). And if you say but people who have been vaccinated have still tested positive for COVID I swear I will punch your lights out. Learn what that really means. If you want this pandemic to be over there is only one way for that to happen and it’s for everyone to get the vaccine.
So f*^k you if you haven’t gotten it.
We had it beat. We were starting to reopen, to get back to normal, to come out on the other side. All you had to do was get the jab, once for J&J, twice for the others. The first day I was eligible I made an appointment to get it. More importantly the wife (Cruella) made an appointment to get it as well. Put a pin in that point, we’ll come back to it after the jump.
On June 15 California declared that anyone who was vaccinated could go without a mask, not have to observe social distancing, and in general get back to life as we knew it. Last week many counties in California were forced to reintroduce those precautions because the Delta variant, which it has been shown the vaccine protects against, has spiked here and across the country. Who’s getting sick? Not those of us vaccinated. Only those who are not. In other words, those of us who did what we were asked to do, what we were pleaded with to do, now have to go back to Pandemic Days because little Karen Kouldn’t Kare with her degree in epidemiology from the University of Fox News has to be kept alive and well.
I’ll do it, cause I’m just that kind of community minded person, but Karen can go f##k herself.
The Daily Grind In #TFC
Tales of troubled times in #TFC. Continue reading The Daily Grind In #TFC
Things I Don’t Care About
“Hey, Mr. Spaceman won’t you please take me along for a ride.” Continue reading Things I Don’t Care About
Ryne Hancock: The Tool Is There
Get vaccinated, y’all. Continue reading Ryne Hancock: The Tool Is There
Don’t Fauci My Florida?
Freedom, man. Continue reading Don’t Fauci My Florida?
Death Cults “R” Us
I’ve been referring to the GOP as a death cult for years now, but over the last few weeks it truly has completed its metamorphosis. Back in the early days of the madness that has now taken full control of the party, it only venerated the death of people it considered to be bad or evil, and this manifested itself in strong Republican positions favoring the death penalty and wars that killed people of color. But during Ronald Regan’s second presidential campaign, the conservative political movement decided to marry a conservative religious movement: fundamentalist Christianity. The GOP promised this bigoted, … Continue reading Death Cults “R” Us
Today on Tommy T’s Random Ruminations – Terminal Stupidity edition
You know, I’ve tried – really TRIED to have sympathy for idiot anti-vaxxers. I really have. At least I’ve tried to have sympathy for their friends and families they infected while they were asymptomatically blowing the virus into the air around them. But I’m running out of fucks to give. Seriously. A nurse. A fucking ER NURSE. The stupidity of the “You can’t tell me what to do with my body” (irony meter pegged) cult is fatal. Even the ones that COVID doesn’t kill outright will spend a lot of their time in the hospital suffering from the “long-hauler” issues … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Random Ruminations – Terminal Stupidity edition
Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – “Something Old” edition
We’ll skip the “borrowed and “blue” parts, and start off with the “something new” stuff, if you don’t mind :
You’re probably aware, if you follow this series, that the $88,000 / quarter Freepathon beg-a-thon is a prominent part of Freeperville, and how Jim Rob and his son manage to live on a measly $160,000/ year each beggars (see what I did there?) the imagination.
It’s also no secret that the end of each one and the beginning of the next one have been slowly creeping together. Lately, though……
Woo hoo!! OVER THE TOP!! Congratulations and thank you all very much!! God bless. [FReepathon Thread]
Posted on 6/24/2021, 9:41:39 AM by Jim Robinson
Please note the date.
And now –
Woo hoo!! And our 3rd quarter 2021 FReepathon is now underway!!
Posted on 7/1/2021, 8:52:00 AM by Jim Robinson
Woo hoo indeed.
Six days.
Six days between the end of one freepathon and the beginning of the next.
They might as well just leave the progress indicator pasted at the top of the page.
I used to think (and kinda still do) that Jim Rob always fudged the “end of the Freepathon” by claiming a touchdown from the 30-yard line, but now I’m not so sure. Freepers would occasionally complain about the beginning of the next bleg coming so much closer to the previous one (in olden times, they raised the money for the quarter in less than a month), only to be chastised by all and sundry for being a ungrateful commie.
Now? Not a peep.
More after the break –
Continue reading “Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – “Something Old” edition”
Doing What He Was Elected To Do
We, by which I mean I, spend an inordinate amount of time here at First Draft excoriating national or wannabe national politicians for their various grandstanding moves and Sunday Morning talk show blather. We, by which I mean I, never seem to talk about politicians doing the job they were elected to do.
Now yes politicians are elected for the most part to vote on enacting laws or to be our “leaders”, whatever that word might mean to you. But we are also supposed to elect politicians to help with more mundane everyday problems. The issue is that too often we forget about that last reason. Try and get a politician to help ME? They only want to help the big money donors. They only want me to remember them come election day, they’re not going to help ME with any personal problem.
But I’m here to tell you that political leaders can help you in your everyday life. One just did that for me.
Since the first days of shelter in place I’ve been on unemployment. All of my rather substantial work bookings for 2020 disappeared pretty much over night in late March and early April. Even though I got a job as an enumerator for the Census just as the bookings were drying up, that job ended up not beginning until mid August and ended in mid October. Thus I was four months without a paycheck.
I am fortunate to have other sources of income so the wife (Cruella) and I didn’t go hungry and we didn’t lose our house, but those bi-weekly checks from the Employment Development Department (EDD) went a long way to keeping us from the middle class’s greatest bête noir, dipping into savings. Even when we both started work with the Census and our wages were greater than what we were getting via unemployment we kept the accounts going because we knew the Census job was ultimately a temp gig. Sure enough when it ended it was easy to get back to getting checks from the state.
I wanna stop at this point to say something about Unemployment Insurance. It IS an insurance policy. Workers pay into it on a paycheck by paycheck basis. In my case I not only paid into it for forty plus years, but for many of those years I paid into it twice per paycheck, once as the employee and once as the employer (yes, in case you didn’t know, your employer matches your contribution on a dollar for dollar basis). What it is NOT is an entitlement as some in the political sphere would have you believe. Whenever I hear things like that I want to respond “so when the house you’ve made insurance payments on for years burns down you’d be okay with the insurance company saying they’re not going to pay you because that would be an entitlement”? It’s the rainy day fund and in 2020 it was pouring.
By the way, it’s the same story for social security and disability. Insurance policies, not entitlements. Both.
Welcome Home
Some say the best part of going away is the coming home. Well it’s certainly nice to be home. At least I know where everything is supposed to be and generally is unless of course I moved it before we left because “It’ll be so much easier to find it when we get home”. When we left California there was still a pandemic going. When we got home…not so much. I mean it’s still going on everywhere else, but here in the Golden State it’s become as clothing optional as Baker Beach. And by clothing I mean masks. Masked up … Continue reading Welcome Home
Welcome To Trumptanamo
The stupid burns like bleach. Continue reading Welcome To Trumptanamo
Notes From The COVID Road
Random thoughts along the West Coast COVID trail
You know how in JAWS they wanted to kill the shark to save the summer holiday season for Amity Island? Well they blow the shark up (“Smile you son of a …”) and swim back to shore and…fade to black. We never find out if they saved the summer holiday season.
That’s kind of where we are right now with COVID, vaccinations, and the summer season. Some places have opened up fully for business, some partially, and some, well, it’s hard to say what they are doing. So in California the shark blows up and everyone comes flooding in. While on this trip I have booked four separate tour hosting gigs for groups coming from all over the country. Meanwhile in Washington the shark is blown up and people from Washington itself and neighboring states who are vaccinated are taking the opportunity to get out and enjoy some of what they’ve been missing for the past year and a half. Oregon? Best I can say is some people think the shark either wasn’t blown up or was never there at all. Others think everything’s fine. Totally depends on where you are and even from one town to another the rules change.
Asked the waiter at the restaurant last night if their business has been impacted by the ferry service closing between Victoria and Port Angeles. He hemmed and hawed, finally admitting that he doesn’t pay much attention to Canada since he can’t go there (hmm, that little scrap over the illegal substance conviction must have put a damper on his pro snowboarding career). But the town has definitely suffered since there is no ferry service from Victoria to Port Angeles because of Canada’s COVID border closure. That ferry normally carries hundreds of cars a day back and forth and suddenly it’s up and gone. What few waterfront bars and restaurants are still in business (lots of empty store fronts) were busy on a Father’s Day Sunday night, but only BECAUSE there were so relatively few left. On the other hand the hotels were jammed with Olympic National Park enthusiasts eager to get out in the fresh cool air and hike, bike, backpack, and otherwise take advantage of the beauty of nature.
Washington does have a more lenient attitude toward COVID precautions. Signs dot pretty much every retail and eating location that say in effect “All employees have been vaccinated so if you don’t want to wear a mask, we’re okay with that”. And almost as a thank you for their efforts, most people will wear a mask into the building and remove it at a designated point (at a table in a restaurant, once fully inside a retail establishment, etc.). And no one barks or demands compliance with government mandates.
In general it’s the small towns that seem to be doing better than the large cities we visited. I suppose if you don’t have a lot of businesses in the first place you have less businesses to lose. Seattle in particular has a horrible problem with drug addicts on the streets downtown because they have moved into the abandoned buildings large retailers (Macy’s, Ross) and small have abandoned. At one point we walked back from Pike Place Market to our hotel along Pike Street and watched no less than a dozen junkies lighting up crack and meth and shooting up heroin, all sitting in the doorways of these abandoned retail locations. With no one caring to push them away from their front doors, Superfly’s cliental are beginning to act like they own the street. That’s not good for what retail establishments still ply their trade down there and even worse for the city as a whole. Vibrant downtowns bring not just locals and tourists but a sense of a city moving forward. Frankly it made even me, urbanite from day one, feel uncomfortable and on edge. The response from the police and city officials? A shrug and the excuse “why arrest them, they’ll just be out and back in the same space in a matter of a few hours”. I understand this has been going on pre-COVID, but the pandemic has worsened the situation.
Welcome Back, Normal Life
The weather here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia has finally warmed up and I have been spending time on our back deck, tending to my flower boxes and my vegetable and herb container garden, and serenaded by the distant cicada spaceship chorus, and the ever-increasing sound of the close-in singers who have synched up in their search for mates. I wrote earlier about my anticipation of the Brood X emergence and I am happy to say that after feeling a bit anxious that we wouldn’t see or hear them, they have been putting on an incredible sound show. … Continue reading Welcome Back, Normal Life
Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – “It’s just the flu, bro” edition
Good morning, everyone! Get your ISO suits on, because not only are we doing a deep dive into stupidity, we’re going into a highly infectious COVID-19 zone.
If you weren’t already aware of it, there’s been a frequent series of threads entitled “Flubros and flubras” aimed at COVID-19 deniers, even as the pandemic has slain Americans by the hundreds of thousands It follows the former guy’s dictum of :
Finally, after deciding that he’s beating a dead horse (another Freeper started a mocking series of posts entitled “The Butcher’s Bill (it’s just the flu, bro)“, the “Flubros and flubras” originator, “impimp” (insert your own joke here) is giving up, but is still a disbeliever.
Flubros and Flubras Final Daily Thread! Year 2 (a place for Flubros and Flubras)
http://www.Freerepublic.com ^ | 15 May 2021 | ImpimpPosted on 5/15/2021, 12:11:10 AM by impimp
It’s just the flu, bro.
There are a few TBD items with the Coronavirus: 1.Will they resume the lockdown in the fall/winter when flu season picks up? 2.Will there be a vaccine passport in any way? 3.When will laggards like churches, schools and hardcore blue states finally see the light?
I will post a Flubro thread if anything related to these items, or something else interesting pops up. But the daily thread is over now that the CDC has relaxed somewhat. It’s been great fun and I have enjoyed discussing Coronavirus items with Flubros and Flubras over the past 15 months. I like to think that we influenced many Freepers, who are, of course, more influential politically than the Illuminati. I also like to think that in some small way we made things better and freer here in America. Well done FRiends!
To: who_would_fardels_bear
Dunno – let’s cut yours off and find out.
To: impimpThank you, impimp! You did a great job, day in and day out, to keep the FReeper FearPorn from infecting our brains.
“Freeper Fearporn” is the name of my next band.
It was a
magnanimousworthless and lethal effort.
FIFY.
Too bad so many were, and still are, so afraid that they will only obey they overlords, no matter how willy nilly the rules of the overlords are.
23 posted on 5/15/2021, 8:15:05 AM by FamiliarFace
Then, the author of the “Butcher’s Bill” posts just has to ruin “impimp”s fun :
To: impimp
.
Fortunately, it’s just the flu.
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Right?
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TED NUGENT ON COVID-19 FIGHT: ‘I DIDN’T THINK I WAS GONNA MAKE IT’
UltimateClassicRock ^ | April 28, 2021
Posted on 4/29/2021, 1:56:38 PM by nickcarrawayTed Nugent has revealed that he feared for his life during his recent battle with COVID-19.”Five or six days ago, it was really bad. I didn’t think I was gonna make it,” the guitarist declared during a live webcast tonight. “I literally couldn’t function for about 20 hours… I’ve never been so scared in all my life.”He described his symptoms as a “six-foot-two, 225-pound headache, like nothing I have ever experienced. I mean, from the tip of my toes to the top of my hair I literally was dizzy and weak and struggled to get up to go to the bathroom.”Nugent then explained that a group of doctors came to his aid, with one even paying for a private plane to take him to a hospital. “They came from around the world, they go, ‘Uncle Ted we got the stuff, Uncle Ted don’t worry we got you covered, Uncle Ted we’re sending a plane and we’re taking you to the UT medical center and we got ya, man!’ I could literally cry, it was so powerful.”
“I literally was dizzy and weak and struggled to get up to go to the bathroom.”
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Why did you bother to do that? It’s not like you haven’t shit yourself before…
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Click on “continue reading” to – well – you know….
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Tweet Of The Day: Naomi Wolf Edition
Every decade is the Me Decade for Naomi Wolf. Continue reading Tweet Of The Day: Naomi Wolf Edition
A Postcard From The Unemployment Line
There’s been a lot of talk in the past months about how Americans don’t want to go back to work.
I say bunk.
Americans want to work. They need to work. Not just for the paycheck, but for the pride of accomplishment and the upward mobility it provides. It’s ingrained in our DNA, all those descendants of seekers who came from all over the world to this egalitarian utopia.
OK it’s not egalitarian, it’s not utopia, and there are just as many current immigrants these days as descendants but go with me on this.
Companies are complaining they can’t get people to work for them. Imagine that. For years companies molted workers every time the economy went the least bit south, disregarding years of service and the effect on not just the workers but their families and their communities, all so the company could show a healthy bottom line to the stock market.
And I say that as someone whose main source of income these days comes from the healthy bottom line those companies show the stock market.
It’s my main source of income since like so many others I am on that unemployment line, right behind the waitress from my favorite restaurant and the guy who used to work at the gas station. OK it’s no longer a physical line, it’s the cyber-line of the California Employment Development Department website. The line stretches over a million people long at the moment. The EDD is so overwhelmed that getting a straight answer has turned into many people’s full time employment. And not just those trying to get their accounts straightened out. A new industry has popped up to take advantage of the state’s fumbling response to an unprecedented need and a massive amount of fraud. For a fee someone will robo-call EDD for you till they get through then stay on hold till an actual human answers the call. Then they patch you in.
American ingenuity at it’s finest. Find a need and fill it as dentists and cement contractors say.
Meantime there is an enormous surge in post COVID hiring needs. The most ubiquitous sign in the state at the moment is “Help Wanted”. Conservatives are blaming the state government for this shortage of workers, saying the combination of unemployment insurance and extra money being doled out to keep people afloat is causing workers to not want to go back to work.
First of all let’s get this out of the way. No one is getting money just handed to them by the state. They are getting the benefit of the money they have invested in unemployment INSURANCE, money they had no say in it being taken. For me that is over 40 years of paycheck dings every week to pay for something that up until a year ago I never put a claim in on. I’ll also add that for over half of those 40 years I was an employer so I personally got dinged twice every week. This is the rainy day fund you were taught to have “just in case”.
Well for the past year the rain has been a deluge.
Saturday Odds & Sods: Carry On
The featured image is a photograph by Diane Arbus who was an extremely interesting and deeply weird photographer. Her motto was: “Take pictures of what you fear.” Words to live by.
I’d amend that to say: Deal with what you fear. I’m trying to do that in my own life. I’ve long had a fear of heights and a bridge phobia, which has intensified as I’ve aged. The bridge phobia is particularly unfortunate as I’ve always lived in places where bridges are a fact of life. I just white-knuckle it and muddle through. What else can I do?
My phobias also explain why I’m taking it slow in regard to the COVID after times. I may be fully vaccinated but many are nor. It’s why I’m proceeding with caution. I did, however, eat in a restaurant on our anniversary. A small triumph for trying times. Oh well, what the hell.
Before moving on to our theme song, some Diane Arbus trivia. She was married to actor Allan Arbus who is best known as army shrink Sidney Freedman on MASH. Allan was also a close friend of Montgomery Clift. The late Patricia Bosworth wrote excellent biographies of both Monty Clift and Diane Arbus. If you like tragic tales of talented people who died too young, they should be up your alley.
Stephen Stills wrote this week’s theme song for CSNY’s 1970 album Deja Vu. As the opening track, it gets things off to a rousing start and remains a staple of his set lists. I’d say CSN’s set lists but Crosby’s malakatude has made a reunion impossible. Imagine pissing off the most mild-mannered of rock stars, Graham Nash.
We have two versions of Carry On for your listening pleasure: the studio original and a raucous live version featuring shouty, off-key vocals and sensational guitar playing by Stills and Young.
Ready to visit Disambiguation City? JJ Cale wrote and recorded *his* Carry On in 1981:
Now that we’ve had deja vu and worn shades, let’s jump to the break.
The Friday Fishwrap
Once upon a time there was a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle (that was a newspaper) named Herb Caen. His column ran in the paper six days a week, but his Friday column was called the Friday Fishwrap. A convenient reminder that that morning’s paper would be used in the evening to wrap up and dispose of the remains of the no meat on Fridays throw aways. Thus he filled the column with throw away items, thoughts, flotsam and jetsam.
In his honor I’m going to try that today.
The Democrats missed an opportunity last week with the 1/6 investigation vote in the Senate. They should have let the Repugnicants filibuster, really filibuster, the Jimmy Stewart in MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON type filibuster, where all work in government comes to a stop. The public would have gotten a look at what the filibuster really is. Then the Dems could have gone on a media blitz tearing up the Repugnicants for bringing the federal government to that halt. It could have built a groundswell of support into a tsunami of criticism, the kind of criticism that would prevent the Repugs from trying to filibuster the For The People Act or the Infrastructure Plan.
On HBO Max right now is a film of the play OSLO. It’s about the back channel negotiations that led to the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993 between Israel and the PLO. The key takeaway from the film is that the Norwegians who acted as facilitators between the two parties insisted that each day when the meeting ended all the participants would then sit down and have dinner and drinks together and talk only of their families and friends. In other words humanizing each side to the other. If the Israelis and the Palestinians can do that, surely those of us on the left can have a meal with those on the right.
The San Jose rail system is still down, a week after the proverbial disgruntled worker killed nine. The reason? He had planted bombs at his house and bomb making materials were found in his locker at the yard. The VTA is taking no chances and methodically going through everything looking for explosive material. Maybe if they had combed his employment record as keenly as this, nine of his fellow workers would be alive today. Just saying.
The Army won’t investigate Herr Obermeister Flynn’s comments on the appropriateness of a “Myanmar style coup” here in the country all members of the armed forces swear an allegiance to protect. They say it’s because they never investigate retired officers. OK then, call him back to duty and court martial his ass for insubordination, treason, and any other crime you can think of that he’s committed.
There’s an old saying in politics: If you’ve got the votes, call the roll. Gavin Newsom has the votes to overcome this insipid recall vote so it looks like we will have the election in early September. Once that is finished, can we please talk about making it more difficult to qualify a recall vote? Ten percent of the electorate should not have the power to force a wasteful and unnecessary recall election.
More after the break
Of Hatred, Spite & Envy
Biden in Tulsa. Trump in exile. Continue reading Of Hatred, Spite & Envy
A Postcard From the Family Reunion
Memorial Day weekend is traditionally a time for warm weather, barbeques, and family gatherings. As we come (hopefully) to the end of the COVID age I was able to indulge in all three this past weekend.
After the long winter of COVID, hot weather and full vaccinations brought my younger son and his fiancée up from their Los Angeles homestead. It was the first time the wife (Cruella) and I have actually held them in our arms in over 15 months. In a bit of symmetry, it was they who we were visiting when we got the word that shelter in place was about to be implemented and had to skedaddle out of LA and back to NorCal.
Thus they are, at least to my way of thinking, the Alpha and the Omega of the COVID era.
Knowing they were coming up I arranged to have as many of our extended family come to our house for a Sunday barbeque. My older son, my brother and his wife, his son and family, my brother in law, my sister in law, my other sister in law, a few other odds and ends brought our total to 17.
Seventeen people all in one place, blithely transitioning from the house to the porch, the backyard, and back again. No masks. No worries.
In other words, normal.
Though they talk and Zoom pretty consistently, my sons haven’t been physically in the same place since Thanksgiving 2019. The elder’s plans to visit the younger in April of 2020 were of necessity scuttled. Get them together and it doesn’t matter that they already have the full picture of each other’s lives, all stories must be retold with the personal embellishment of a hug or a brotherly punch in the arm. And the soon to be sister-in-law got in on the action as well, adding a sarcastic jab or a roll of the eyes.
She’ll fit into the family just fine.
The two sides of the family hadn’t seen each other in nearly two years. All plans for any other get together were victims of the pandemic. Survival stories were in abundance, stories that I may have known from my side but Cruella’s family hadn’t heard or vice versa.
This is a pretty interesting group of folks. A lawyer, a judge, a retired doctor, a retired nurse, a marketing maven, a movie and TV props professional, two teachers, a computer guru, a hedge fund manager, a therapist, a travel and tourism professional, and your humble correspondent. Not to mention several kids ranging from 5 to 11. A house filled with noise and talk and gossip and music and kids running around and a table groaning with smoked meats and fresh salads, an ice chest filled with local wines and Russian River’s Pliny The Elder beer. And for dessert, freshly picked strawberries that the lawyer said eating one changed her life.
Wicked Rain
We had another bout of heavy rain overnight. We only had minor street flooding but the folks in Baton Rouge and Lake Charles took it in the neck. I feel terrible for Lake Charles: they were slammed by Hurricane Laura … Continue reading Wicked Rain
Why you got to gimme a fight?
Many (many) years ago, my then teen-aged brother was going to microwave himself a hot dog for lunch. A vigorous debate immediately ensued between one of my sisters and a visiting friend about how he should dress his hot dog. The discussion and the dog got a little heated (I come from a Polish-American family where everyone has an opinion on everything.). My other sister popped in to see what the rumpus was about, and after she’d been briefed, she asked my sister and her friend “Are you going to eat that hot dog?”. After they both answered no, she … Continue reading Why you got to gimme a fight?
Stormy Monday Blues
26 years ago New Orleans had rainfall of Biblical proportions. The rain came on May 8, 1995 and the extent of the damage was unclear until May 10, 1995. It had rained up to 27 inches in some parts of … Continue reading Stormy Monday Blues
Hire a Clown, Expect a Circus
I have been reading a lot of really stupid stuff in the ether, and not because I deliberately sought it out. Now you have to, too. Bill and Melinda Gates are getting divorced. I thought something was up when I … Continue reading Hire a Clown, Expect a Circus
The Dingbat Right
Take a tour of Dingbat Right Nation with your guide, Adrastos. Continue reading The Dingbat Right
A Postcard From Mumbai
Count me as one of those of European ancestry who have a fascination with India.
I have only been there once, but the country and it’s peoples got deep into my soul long before I was physically in the country. Maybe it was a little too much Gunga Din when I was a kid. Trust me when I tell you that no movie, no television show, no amount of E.M. Forester or Rudyard Kipling can prepare you for the experience of actually being there. The term “an assault on the senses” was coined especially for India.
When COVID hit the world in early 2020 it was assumed by many that India would be hit particularly hard. Rampant poverty combined with a billion plus people combined with third world conditions even in the midst of modern cities seemed to be a recipe for contamination that might take down the world’s largest semi-democracy.
Instead India wasn’t hit too badly. Many theories were put forth for this paradoxical situation including that Indians spend more time outdoors, weren’t as obese, the population is relatively youthful, and most interestingly that because Indians are exposed to more diseases on a daily basis they have built up a natural immunity not just to coronaviruses but to many pathogens.
Or in laymen’s terms, Darwin was right.
Begrudgingly the government did institute several restrictions on gatherings, asked the population to mask up, and in general took the same steps that most developed countries had taken to slow the growth of the pandemic. There seemed to be an attitude of “while we’ve got this licked, we want to help the rest of the world”.
But India, like so many other democracies around the world, is now ruled by a populist quasi tyrant, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is Modi who at first dismissed COVID, continued to hold super spreader events like political rallies, railed against the actual science of COVID, and who now has taken the extraordinary stance that social media companies should not just take down but ban any message critical of his response to the crisis. Remind you of anyone else?
So it’s no surprise that Modi disregarded the experts who came to him three months ago saying all signs point towards a huge upturn in cases about to hit the country. Instead he doubled down on the notion that things were only getting better, lifting all restrictions on gatherings. The northern town of Haridwar held one of the world’s biggest gatherings this month, with millions of people celebrating the Hindu festival Kumbh Mela.
On Monday India reported it’s largest single day number of infections, 350,000. 2800 people died of COVID on that day alone. This after a full week of infection rates north of 200,000 per day the previous week. Hospitals are jammed, oxygen has become scarce, and crematoriums have become so backed up with bodies they are forced to stack them like cordwood.
Several Indian states have disregarded the federal government’s antipathy towards doing anything to solve the crisis and taken measures of their own. Maharashtra, home to Mumbai, has banned any gathering of more than five people, all non-essential commerce, and limited even essential services to restricted hours. The response from the federal government to these measures has been scorn. The response in the real world has been a leveling off of COVID cases.
The Indian government has been able to vaccinate about 10% of the population which would be great were it not for the fact that that still leaves over a BILLION PEOPLE unvaccinated. This in a country that produces more vaccines than any other in the world, but they are hindered by greed (foreign countries are willing to pay more for vaccines) and a lack of the raw materials and native intellectual property that prevents the factories from being able to produce more for themselves.